Read Tuesday - The Black Friday Of Books!

Welcome RLL, a paranormal author, who has helped organize a great event for today (along with founder Chris McMullen), where readers can get books for cheaper prices than normal! Read the interesting questions I and other authors have answered in support of read Tuesday and find out more information about the event below!

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In support of READ TUESDAY, I'm answering my questions on other people's blogs. Writers chatting to each other on writing. Tedious or devious? Let’s have twenty questions, and find out. I've given different answers to the questions here:

   STEPHANIE STAMM.

   MISHA BURNETT.

   CHARLES YALLOWITZ.

   LISA CAPEHART.

   MARGO BOND COLLINS.

   THE RANTING PAPIZILLA.

   SUZANNA WILLIAMS.

   R.B. AUSTIN at 2unpublishedgirls.

1. Fire rages in your house. Everyone is safe, but you. You decide to smash through the window, shielding your face with a book. What is the book?

I decided the book would be nearest the window. If I scramble over a cupboard with my right hand reaching for the window, my left hand would go to a bookshelf containing...THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON in 1666, by Walter George Bell.

2. Asleep in your rebuilt house, you dream of meeting a dead author. But not in a creepy stalkerish way, so you shoo Mr Poe out of the kitchen. Instead, you sit down and have cake with which dead author?

Graham Greene. He'd build a story around the purchase of the cake. Brothers, one Communist and one Fascist, walk into the same shop to purchase a cake for their mother. The Fascist is for sharing, but the Communist wants it all. Greene leaves some readers bemused.

3. Would you name six essential items for writers? If, you know, cornered and threatened with torture.

The correct answer to this question is NO. I can use that ploy but the once.

4. Who’d win in a fight between Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster? If, you know, you were writing that scene.

Gwangi.

5. It’s the end of a long and tiring day. You are still writing a scene. Do you see it through to the end, even though matchsticks prop your eyelids open, or do you sleep on it and return, refreshed, to slay that literary dragon another day?

I decide to write half-asleep and no one notices the difference. This may worry other writers, but I quickly adapt to the changing situation - increasing my output.

6. You must introduce a plot-twist. Evil twin or luggage mix-up?

Twin dinosaurs attack the airport baggage carousel, speeding the sorting process. Who saw that one coming?

7. Let’s say you write a bunch of books featuring an amazing recurring villain. At the end of your latest story you have definitely absitively posolutely killed off the villain for all time and then some. Did you pepper your narrative with clues hinting at the chance of a villainous return in the next book?

Twenty villains are lined up to take that cad's place.

8. You are at sea in a lifeboat, with the barest chance of surviving the raging storm. There’s one opportunity to save a character, drifting by this scene. Do you save the idealistic hero or the tragic villain?

I save Margaret Brown - because she's looking sinkable. She says I can call her Maggie. I mistakenly name her Molly. Could be the start of something.

9. It’s time to kill a much-loved character – that pesky plot intrudes. Do you just type it up, heartlessly, or are there any strange rituals to be performed before the deed is done?

I have standing stones shipped in.

10. Embarrassing typo time. I’m always typing thongs instead of things. One day, that’ll land me in trouble. Care to share any wildly embarrassing typing anecdotes? If, you know, the wrong word suddenly made something so much funnier. (My last crime against typing lay in omitting the u from Superman.)

Bizarrely, I killed a gunman in one sentence only for him to leap into the fight a mere paragraph later.

11. I’ve fallen out of my chair laughing at all sorts of thongs I’ve typed. Have you?

The answer carries a Beyond Adult rating. If you laugh after reading, you are too immature to be let near the statement.

12. You take a classic literary work and update it by throwing in rocket ships. Dare you name that story? Pride and Prejudice on Mars. That kind of thing.

Sleeping Beauty: A Princess of Mars. That feels like an answer someone gave. I'll try another. Goldilocks and the Three Clones.

13. Seen the movie. Read the book. And your preference was for?

Pepper in soup.

14. Occupational hazard of being a writer. Has a book ever fallen on your head? This may occasionally happen to non-writers, it must be said.

Several books rebounded from my head - the writing was THAT bad.

15. Did you ever read a series of books out of sequence?

I've stored books on shelves out of sequence and occasionally the wrong way up.

16. You encounter a story just as you are writing the same type of tale. Do you abandon your work, or keep going with the other one to ensure there won’t be endless similarities?

I could answer this question. It's just that I've answered it several times now, and I see a danger of writing the same type of answer. I think I'll have to abandon the work. Though I could check my previous answers to ensure there won't be endless similarities.

17. Have you ever stumbled across a Much-Loved Children’s Classic™ that you’ve never heard of?

Ice cream and jelly. There had to be a time in life when I'd never heard of it.

18. You build a secret passage into your story. Where?

Between the raindrops.

19. Facing the prospect of writing erotica, you decide on a racy pen-name. And that would be…

Lucy Lastic.

20. On a train a fan praises your work, mistaking you for another author. What happens next?

I warn the fan to keep hefting coal or the boiler-pressure will drop.

For E.B. Black's answers to my questions, visit REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Here's a blog post on READ TUESDAY.

And here's a funny one on CONTACTING PEOPLE FOR READ TUESDAY.

Featured in the READ TUESDAY sale on December the 10th, 2013 - Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords and WITCHES. Both will be free on the day.